Guaranteed Word Decrypter

If you've come across an old Microsoft Word document that you completely forgot about, and if the file is protected with a password, it's time to resort to third-party applications capable of cracking the key and giving you access to the file contents.

Guaranteed Word Decrypter is a password decryption tool designed for this purpose. As the name suggests, it focuses on Microsoft Word docs only. The utility can be used from the command-line interface only, an aspect which is likely to put off users who are accustomed to the graphical environment for performing actions with the mouse.

Nevertheless, you should know that the commands available for Word Decrypter are pretty intuitive, especially since the full syntax is shown on screen when downloading the .exe from the unzipped archive.

The syntax is guaword <options> <filename> <start_key> <end_key>. Unfortunately, the application supports only older versions of Microsoft Word, namely 97 and 2000, so it will be useless when attempting to decrypt documents created with newer editions of MS Word.

As far as the supported options are concerned, you can use /s to allow the app to search for a file-independent super key and use it for decryption if found, as well as write /pXYZ if you want to enable crypto functions #X,Y,Z. These range from 0 to 9, and the best one is taken into account by default (9). In addition to specifying the Word document for decryption, you can set a start and end key, ranging from 0 to 16383. The entire range is used by default, but you can significantly decrease decryption time if you remember any part of the password.

All aspects considered, Guaranteed Word Decrypter delivers a solution for cracking the passwords of protected Microsoft Word documents. However, the fact that it's available through the console interface only is likely to scare off many users.